Last Call for Liberty

How America's Genius for Freedom Has Become Its Greatest Threat

Os Guinness

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780830845590
• eBook ISBN: 9780830873371
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Historia de Norteamérica

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World Magazine Book of the Year

The hour is critical. The American republic is suffering its gravest crisis since the Civil War. Conflicts, hostility, and incivility now threaten to tear the country apart. Competing visions have led to a dangerous moment of cultural self-destruction. This is no longer politics as usual, but an era of political warfare where our enemies are not foreign adversaries, but our fellow citizens.

Yet the roots of the crisis are deeper than many realize. Os Guinness argues that we face a fundamental crisis of freedom, as America's genius for freedom has become her Achilles' heel. Our society's conflicts are rooted in two rival views of freedom, one embodied in "1776" and the ideals of the American Revolution, and the other in "1789" and the ideals of the French Revolution. Once again America has become a house divided, and Americans must make up their minds as to which freedom to follow. Will the constitutional republic be restored or replaced?

This grand treatment of history, civics, and ethics in the Jewish and Christian traditions represents Guinness's definitive exploration of the prospects for human freedom today. He calls for a national conversation on the nature of freedom, and poses key questions for concerned citizens to consider as we face a critical chapter in the American story. He offers readers a checklist by which they can assess the character and consequences of the freedoms they are choosing.

In the tradition of Alexis de Tocqueville, Guinness provides a visitor's careful observation of the American experiment. Discover here a stirring vision for faithful citizenship and renewed responsibility for not only the nation but also the watching world.

NOTES

Introduction

1. Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 189.

2. John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Essays in the History of Liberty, ed. J. Rufus Fears (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 1:xix.

3. For example, Jonathan Sacks, The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society (London: Continuum, 2007), 37; and Gabrielle Kuby, The Global Sexual Revolution: Destruction of Freedom in the Name of Freedom (Kettering, OH: LifeSite, 2012).

4. Personal conversation with a European ambassador at the United Nations, September 2014.

5. Abraham Lincoln, in his Address at a Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, April 18, 1864.

6. Abraham Lincoln, “Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois,” in The American Republic: Primary Sources, ed. Bruce Frohnen (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002), 518-22.

7. See, for example, James Davison Hunter and Carl Desportes Bowman, The Vanishing Center of American Democracy: 2016 Survey of American Political Culture (Charlottesville, VA: Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture, 2017).

8. Daniel J. Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth: From Christian Separation Through the Protestant Reformation (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996), 137.

9. Abraham Lincoln, Letter to H. L. Pierce, April 1859, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, The Abraham Lincoln Association, 2006.

10. See Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 2016), 13; Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 156; Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 4:237; Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address,” 1863; Herman Melville, White-Jacket (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 153; and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, address to be delivered at the Trade Mart in Dallas on November 22, 1963, “Full Text: JFK’s Never-Delivered Speech from Dallas,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 21, 2013—he was assassinated before he reached his destination.

11. Henry Kissinger, World Order (New York: Penguin, 2014), 373.

12. Shelby Steele, Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 198.

Question One: Do You Know Where Your Freedom Came From?

1. Winston Churchill, quoted in James C. Humes, The Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 183.

2. See Daniel Hannan, Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World (New York: HarperCollins, 2013).

3. John Adams, The Political Writings of John Adams (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1954), 68.

4. J. R. Tanner, English Constitutional Conflicts of the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 63.

5. William Penn, quoted in Hannan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION: A New, New Birth of Freedom?
• QUESTION ONE: Do You Know Where Your Freedom Came From?
• QUESTION TWO: Are There Enough Americans Who Care About Freedom?
• QUESTION THREE: What Do You Mean by Freedom?
• QUESTION FOUR: Have You Faced Up to the Central Paradox of Freedom?
• QUESTION FIVE: How Do You Plan to Sustain Freedom?
• QUESTION SIX: How Will You Make the World Safe for Diversity?
• QUESTION SEVEN: How Do You Justify Your Vision of a Free and Open Society?
• QUESTION EIGHT: Where Do You Ground Your Faith in Human Freedom?
• QUESTION NINE: Are You Vigilant About the Institutions Crucial to Freedom? A Republic or a Democracy?
• QUESTION TEN: Are You Vigilant About the Ideas Crucial to Freedom? Which Revolution Do They Serve?
• CONCLUSION: America’s Choice: Covenant, Chaos, or Control?
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• NOTES
• NAME INDEX
• SUBJECT INDEX
• ALSO BY OS GUINNESS
• PRAISE FOR LAST CALL FOR LIBERTY
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• MORE TITLES FROM INTERVARSITY PRESS
• Copyright